Nearly forty years after John Cage composed, “Solo for Voice 58”, an indeterminate work consisting of 18 separate parts, it finds its ideal interpreter in Italian-born dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni. The first performer to prepare the full 18 microtonal ragas for a major performance, Cuni executes microtonal melodies in five different languages with stunning ease. On November 2, 2007, Other Minds, presented the American premiere of this iconoclastic interpretation at a concert in Berkeley California. Two basic concepts are embodied in Cuni’s realization of the complete “Solo for Voice 58”: the meaning of raga, which is “to color the mind”, and chance operations, a favorite tool of John Cage. Following Cage’s own instructions, other selections from his “Song Books” (1970) have been integrated and superimposed as part of the “18 Microtonal Ragas”
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